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Thursday, October 1, 2009

October Ennui (with a Side Dish of Nihilism)

I'm afraid I don't have a pretty photo to add to this post, so let me lead you through a guided visualization instead.Ready? Okay!

Imagine you are in a cozy bed. You are halfway between consciousness and waking. You've just pressed your snooze button for the eighteenth time. You stick your foot out of the covers, and it's greeted with shockingly cold air. You pull your foot back in.

When you at last manage to clumsily heave yourself out of bed, it's with the unwelcome realization that it is the first day of OCTOBER. Your brain presents you with a laundry list of things that make you wonder why you bothered to get up at all:

1. You have a blog.2. It's about sewing.3. You haven't managed to produce anything significant for the day ahead of you, in respect to either blogging or sewing.4. You have lots of great ideas, you swear. Smart ones.5. You also have plenty of great sewing projects planned. You have enough new fabric to clothe a small country. Why in the world can't you manage to sew something? Preferably, something that will dazzle everyone on the internet.6. You also have to do your hair and pick out an outfit today. You just did your hair and picked out an outfit yesterday. Do you really have to do this every damn day for the rest of your life?7. Okay, you're starting to sound like that girl from The Bell Jar. Things didn't go so great for her, now did they?8. Hey, cheer up, it's Thursday! You can sew awesome things and write smart blog posts all weekend.9. But the weekend is so short, and then you'll have to start all over again on Monday.10. Okay, you're doing that Bell Jar thing again. Stop it!11. Also, you should find a bestselling novel to edit within the next week. If it could be an award-winning one too, that would be terrif. Thanks.

There! Are you ready to face the day, Sunshine?

In case you can't tell, I've decided to make October National Honesty Month here at Gertie's New Blog for Better Sewing. Get ready for the cold hard truth, friends.

13 comments:

Your blog is without doubt one of the best I've come across. I'm commenting right now because I always check about 2:30 UK time to see what new delightful picture or question you've put up (being a grad student I have plenty of time for such diversionary activity!) Even when you haven't got an ideal post, rather than leaving your fans with nothing you give us a funny little sketch. So relax! You're allowed to have an ennui day.

And the weather has not been very helpful either. At the moment, I'm stuck on the 'should I fuse the wool for my coat or not? Will it make the fabric too stiff? If I don't use black, will it show through to the other side?'. At the moment, just putting one foot in front of the other seems like a huge success.

Ditto Hanna, this blog is the best. Gertie, you can share your ennui with us; what are friends for? As for the weather, I live in Las Vegas, and I have a pile of wool fabric, and no experience sewing cold weather clothes! Do they always have to be dry-cleaned, all the time? Can I Woolite and air dry, both to pretreat, and the finished garment? Can anyone help me? -Sandra

umm. yes. This reminds me of the dearth of posts on either of my blogs for the past month. Lots of ideas, yes. but the time to sit down and write them and take the necessary photos and upload them is escaping me at the moment. I commiserate.

Well, I certainly am glad to know I am not alone having these same issues...you just keep writing honestly and we'll keep reading!!And have you gotten an answer to the question, "do we have to pick out an outfit AND do our hair every damn day?", cause all I'm getting here is static....as for sewing...well, the pile of projects is at least within my view...won't that sewing machine put it all together for me??

Bwah ha ha, OHHHHHHH yes. I had such similar thoughts this morning- woke up, freezing and oh so dispiritingly DARK this morning when I woke up and thbbbbtttt... I had that same life-requires-altogether-too-much-effort kind of a morning. I was getting dressed actually all self-seriously thinking to myself that it sucks that it takes longer to pick out an outfit in the fall because there are more components... ! Yeah, you said it right, a total bell-jar moment. Always reassuring to hear someone else say it though.

I try to remind myself though that I did live in a hot/dry climate for a short time in college, and was surprised how much I missed the seasons-- not the cold, never the cold! But the variations of light and color that you get by having fall, the changes in smells, attitudes, (woolens...) etc. You can't reach the giddy elation I get in spring & summer without the despair of fall & winter, so... I try to remember that romantic, nostalgic feeling about fall, how colors are so much more intense when it's cloudy, and that weird campfire-y smell of a cold front, magical canopies of shocking yellow leaves... sigh, that would be more effective if I hadn't discovered while writing this that my pants (& the long underwear under them) are still patchy damp from walking the dog in the chilly rain, LOL.

Well, my twins turned 6 today, so our day started quite out differently!! I was greeted by excited, newly 6 year old boys and their big brother who is not yet 8. They searched the house for presents, even though the party isn't until Sunday. I had small presents waiting for them, but they were in such an obvious place they didn't see them at first! Once they saw the presents they were excited to have new items and spent the day playing. It just so happened that today was a teacher workday. In their little minds, they thought school was closed just because it was their birthday!!!! Oh, to be 6 again!!!!!I made cupcakes for school tomorrow and worked on getting the house ready for the party while they played. Again, to be 6 again . . .!!Hope your day got better, although your ennui post was funny!!

I can't speak for everyone, but I keep reading beacuse you have a great mix of inspiring pictures and interesting discussions. So it's perfectley ok to not feel on the top of the world every single day! I always find that people are much more interesting behind their facades (hmm, is that really the correct word?). Anyway, hope you'll get a better weekend!